Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Put on a Happy Face!   If ever a political party was morally, spiritually, ethically and intellectually bankrupt, it's the Republican Party of 2006. This "anger" strategy smacks of yet another Rovian brainstorm to keep the rubes distracted by bullshit until November. Judging from the headline below, the Associated Press has apparently swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Hopefully the American public won't be quite so dumb and gullible. Hopefully. . .   GOP's 'Anger' Strategy Has Dems Defensive By BETH FOUHY Associated Press Writer February 08,2006 | NEW YORK -- The Republican national chairman created a furor this week when he suggested Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too "angry" to win the White House in 2008. And to hear Republicans tell it, Clinton is just one of many Democrats with an anger management problem. Former Vice President Al Gore is angry. So is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The party is held hostage by the "angry left." In recent months, GOP operatives and officeholders have cast the Democrats as the anger party, long on emotion and short on ideas. Analysts say the strategy has been effective, trivializing Democrats' differences with the GOP as temperamental rather than substantive. "Angry people are not nice people. They are people to stay away from. They explode now and then," said George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His book "Don't Think of an Elephant" has become something of a Bible for Democrats trying to improve their communication with voters. Political history is dotted with failed presidential candidates perceived by the voters as too angry -- think of Howard Dean's famous scream in 2004, or Bob Dole admonishing George H.W. Bush in 1988 to "stop lying about my record." Both parties' most revered figures in recent years, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, projected optimism and hope. The latest example of the anger strategy came Sunday, when Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on ABC that Clinton "seems to have a lot of anger." He cited comments she made in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day in which she likened the Republican-led House to a "plantation" and called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history. "I don't think the American people, if you look historically, elect angry candidates," Mehlman said. Democrats defended Clinton. "Democrats want a leader who shares their frustration -- even anger -- about Republican failures," Democratic strategist Dan Newman said. "Anger at terrorists is expected, outrage about corruption is a plus." Some Democrats, in fact, complained that Clinton doesn't get angry enough. Some also denounced Mehlman as mean-spirited, and smelled more than a whiff of sexism in his remarks. "It's the stereotype of the crone -- angry, nasty, but powerful," Lakoff said. RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt dismissed the charge of sexism, saying the anger strategy was fully justified when Democrats launch personal attacks. She cited Dean's description of Republicans as "brain dead" last year, and Reid's calling President Bush a "loser." "Whether she's a man or a woman is completely irrelevant. If some Democrats want to fall back on the gender card, that's their problem," Schmitt said. Other examples of the anger strategy abound. Last summer, with chief White House political adviser Karl Rove under investigation in the CIA leak case, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, denounced Democrats' criticism of Rove as "more of the same kind of anger and lashing out that has become the substitute for bipartisan action and progress." Last month, after Gore criticized the president for approving warrantless eavesdropping on terror suspects, Schmitt retorted: "While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger." Bush himself touched on the anger theme in his recent State of the Union Address, saying: "Our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger." For her part, Clinton -- calmly -- dismissed Mehlman's remarks as a diversion from serious issues and the Republicans' "many failures and shortcomings." But even she has employed the anger strategy. Six years ago, as a Senate candidate in New York, Clinton questioned the temperament of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was expected to be her Republican opponent. Giuliani "gets angry very often," Clinton said. "I don't see the point in getting angry all the time and expending all the energy when we could be figuring out a better way to take care of people."   5:24:40 PM     comment []

Oh My God, You Mean There Is Something Worse Than Gay Marriage??!! At the very least, a global warming campaign would keep these people busy doing good for a change. . .and maybe even cause a nice fat schism on the Right.   Evangelicals urge action on global warming By Alan Elsner1 hour, 11 minutes ago A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders on Wednesday backed legislation opposed by the White House to cut carbon dioxide emissions, kicking off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to combat global warming. The group which included mega-church pastors, Christian college presidents, religious broadcasters and writers, also unveiled a full-page advertisement to run in Thursday's New York Times and a television ad it hopes to screen nationally. "With God's help, we can stop global warming for our kids, our world and our Lord," the television spot declared. The campaign by evangelicals coincided with a call on Wednesday by a leading U.S. think tank for the United States to take immediate steps to fight global warming, including working with other nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Pew Center for Global Climate Change said in a report that America has waited too long to seriously tackle the climate change problem and spelled out 15 steps the United States could take to reduce emissions it spews as the world's biggest energy consumer and producer of greenhouse gases. "This transition will not be easy, but it is crucial to begin now," the Pew Center said. "Further delay will only make the challenge before us more daunting and more costly." The campaign by the evangelical leaders represented a possible split in President George W. Bush's political base, in which Christian evangelical voters are heavily represented. However, the names of most of the president's most influential Christian political backers were notably absent from the list of signatories joining the campaign. Possibly the best-known signer was Rick Warren, author of the best-selling book, "The Purpose Driven Life." TRADING SYSTEM Specifically, and mirroring a proposal by the Pew Foundation, the leaders called on Congress to pass laws to create a trading system that would spur companies to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which scientists say is a major cause of global warming. One such bill, The Climate Stewardship Act, first introduced in 2003 by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), would require that U.S. emissions return to their 2000 levels by 2010. The United States, with around 5 percent of the world's population, accounts for a quarter of its greenhouse gases and U.S. emissions rose by 2 percentage points in 2004 alone, according to government figures. The McCain-Lieberman bill has failed to win passage twice in the Senate, although a majority there did adopt a non-binding resolution to cap emissions. The issue has not come up for a vote in the House of Representatives. The Bush administration opposes imposing mandatory limits and backs voluntary efforts by companies. It has also refused to join the Kyoto Protocol, an international accord signed by the European Union, Japan and most other industrialized nations that sets hard targets for cutting emissions. The Christian leaders said they were impelled by their faith to launch the campaign out of a growing realization that the threat of global warming was real and that the world's poor would suffer the most. Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School, said: "However we treat the world, that's how we are treating Jesus because He is the cosmic glue." The leaders said a poll they commissioned of 1,000 evangelical Protestants showed that two thirds were convinced global warming was taking place. Additionally, 63 percent said the United States must start to address the issue immediately and half said it must act even if there was a high economic cost. The Pew Foundation also recommended boosting renewable fuel output and providing financial incentives to farmers to spur absorption of greenhouse gas emissions on farm lands. U.S. government weather forecasters reported on Tuesday that the nation's January temperatures were the warmest on record, beating the average for the month by 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit (4.7 degrees C). Two weeks ago NASA scientists confirmed that 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded worldwide. (Additional reporting by Tom Doggett) Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited  4:41:16 PM     comment []

Quote of the Day "Well, I really think he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all." --Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) on George W. Bush 11:27:13 AM     comment []

© Copyright 2006 Michael D. Zungolo. Last update: 3/1/2006; 10:12:51 AM.